2/12/2015 - Seminar
The first questions we were asked was 'What is style?' and 'What makes up style?' which was followed by a clip of Cornel West on clothing and style which he states that his style was influenced by a diffusion of different people from music and other areas and if someone had the same style as him, it wouldn't be the same which tells me that style isn't just physical but mentally aswell, it's how you think.
If I was to answer the question, 'What is style?', I would answer it by saying that it's who you are, it defines the type of person you are and it gets influenced by the environment you live in. Everything has their own particular style.
"I invent, distort, deform, lie, inflate, exaggerate, confound and confuse as the mood seizes me. I obey only my own instincts and intuitions." - This was said by Henry Miller. What this makes me think is that people are in control of their own style, they can change it any way they want and how it is changed is influenced by the mood or experience.
I was asked a couple of questions like 'Can one act outside of style?' which I think you can't because a person is always in style, even if they decide to change their style and 'snap' out of it, they are creating another style but as I answered the question, I came across Marcel Breuer who was a Modernist Architect and Furniture Designer. who believed in the "purposeful construction of logical designed objects" whereby the "essential forms for functioning instruments require the 'styleless' utility of design", basically the opposite of what I think, he creates something, not to look good or be in style but to have a purpose and include all of the essentials it needs, he was not interested in style but to solve the problem.
Breuer used 'stylelessness' as an instrument of "logical problem solving" but "design is the manifestation and consideration of significance, not problem solving."
"antipathy to 'style' is always an antipathy to a given style. There are no styleless works of art, only works of art belonging to different, more or less complex stylistic traditions and conventions." - Sontag
Antipathy means a strong dislike so to hate a style is a style of its own and style is influenced by various things. Breuer was opposing style which created a style in which he created chairs in his own way.
What I got from this is that you can't be out of style, there can be only more styles because not choosing a style or opposing a style will develop in a person to create their own style and it can change and be influenced by many things like mood, experiences, the environment. I think style is a mental thing instead of just physical thing because a person can think they are in a style of their own and no-one else will look or feel as good as them even if someone has the same style like Cornel West mentioned in his clip.
I will use this idea of creating my own style for my project work because at the moment, I'm just experimenting with different types of styles to find the one that suits me so that I can eventually develop my own style in the future.
Structuring Style
- A style is a class
- The class is made up of a set of attributes
- These attributes can flow between different styles
- As such, styles mutate and change over time
A style is a box and inside the box is everything that creates our style like how we talk, walk, the products we buy and so on and each one of them makes up the style and can flow between other styles to create other styles, for example, style 'A' can adopt things from style 'B', 'C' and 'D' so you can combine styles together to create another style which means you can't fade out of style or go off style because one way or the other, you always in some sort of style.
'Styles work on intensities, amplitude and diminution.
Style is like a mountain because different peaks of style is displayed and different intensities but just like a mountain, style can change, certain intensities changes depending on various things.
